09 January 2012

Knitting and spinning goals, part 2

I finished spinning the Icelandic fibre that I was working on. It ended up as about 250m of fuzzy fingering-weight yarn. Because I wasn't particularly consistent in my spinning between the two halves of the braid, part of it is fairly well matched in colour and the rest is pretty striped.


I'm not sure what I will do with it - I was originally hoping to make socks, and I think I will still try to find a pattern that I can knit toe-up and two-at-a-time, as I will probably need to make them quite short. I'm not sure what to do about the striping issue. I don't really want one plain sock and one stripy sock, so I may try dividing the yarn at the point where it starts getting really stripy and start with the 'plainer' part for the feet, then change to the stripier part when that runs out.

Knitting with this will probably wait for a while, however, because I have some other goals for 2012 that I would like to get started on. The biggest one is that I want to join in a sweater SAL being organised by one of my favorite dyers, David from Southern Cross Fibres. This is going to be a real challenge for me for lots of reasons, the first of which is because of the amount of time it's going to take! Choosing what fibre to use is going to be another difficulty. I have a couple of colourways that I have 4 braids of, but I'm torn between using one of these or choosing a couple of colours that I have 2 braids of and mixing them in some way. Before I even start spinning though, I'm going to do some more reading about spin control and twist, to see if I can work out a goal for how to spin the yarn. I may even have to (shock horror) do some sampling. As part of the preparation for this project I'm going to start keeping a notebook with notes and spinning samples.

My final goal for 2012, which is somewhat in conflict with all of the other goals, is to finish some of the UFO's that I have in various bags around the place. At the moment I have:
  • the BFL socks that I pictured in the previous entry
  • a Kaffe Fassett jumper pattern that I'm knitting for my husband, started last Easter, finished the back and partway through the front. I love this pattern but it requires quite a bit of concentration so it's not something that I can just pick up and put down


  • an Advent Calender scarf, for which I'm up to day 12. This, although it's lace, is pretty easy knitting so it's an easy project for odd minutes of knitting

  • a blue vest, just needs sewing together and knitting the neck and arm bands
  • 3 shawls, two of which were KALs. One of these is nearly finished (it was my choir rehearsal knitting for much of last year), one is only on clue 4 out of 12 and the other is a fair way through but uses lots of beads so is quite slow. All of these are really 'process' rather than 'product' projects because I don't wear shawls much, but I really like knitting them
  • a Queen Susan Shawl, which is barely started and hasn't been worked on for about a year. I started this and soon realised that it requires so much concentration to knit that I stopped working on it
 On a totally unrelated topic, some notes on birds from last week. I tried to take some photos with my phone of the two white-faced herons that have been hanging around in the creek/drainage channel behind work. It was difficult as they don't let me get too close before they take off, but I got some that I cropped down a bit.


Also, lots of galahs around this morning after the overnight rain. They seemed particularly playful, flapping around in groups and feeding in the long grass.

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